My First Time: Female, 19, England

It felt like I'd been running from sex my whole life. As soon as I sprouted breasts, aged eight, I had to fend off overeager boys who wanted me to do stuff I wasn't ready for yet. They held me down in the playground to look up my skirt, and a decade later, at college parties, different guys ground their erections into my thigh as if I might find it enticing. I let one of them finger me on my nineteenth birthday, as an experiment, but it was about as sexy as a pap smear.

The New Year's Eve after I turned nineteen, I fell off a bar stool and David picked me up. He was my best friend's brother's friend, he was twenty-one, and he was a virgin, too. For the first three months we dated, by some unspoken agreement, he only ever touched me above the waist. When he finally slid his hand between my legs, I was so tense it was awkward for both of us. But I wanted it to feel good one day, so we kept trying, in my dorm room, his apartment, or his car, his hands rubbing, kneading, and poking at me as I tried to find the courage to tell him what felt good, and failed.

I tried to find the courage to tell him what felt good, and failed.

One night we were making out in the back of his car in a country lane close to campus. I was sitting on his knee when he started to stroke me through my underwear, drawing small circles around my clitoris. It tickled. Tingled. I whimpered.

"Tell me what you like," David whispered, slipping his hand inside my underwear.

"Just keep doing that," I said, rocking, panting, and steaming up the windows on the way to my first orgasm ever.

A couple of weeks later, we were kissing on my bed when David moved my hand to his jeans, placing it over his erection and looking at me with a pleading expression. I laughed, nervous: I'd never seen a naked penis before and had no idea what to do with one. But I figured I should find out sometime. "Okay," I said. "Show me what to do."

After that, we practiced making each other come every chance we got, but I still wasn't ready for sex. I was scared of getting pregnant or making a fool of myself. And I was sure it would be excruciating: my friend Kat had lost her virginity when she was fifteen, and she said sex hurt for a really long time. David never pressured me, and I wasn't sure if he was even interested. I stayed with him over the summer, sharing his tiny twin bed, but we didn't seal the deal, or even discuss it.

Ten months after we started dating, a cheesy Meg Ryan movie finally got me in the mood. In City of Angels, she plays a doctor who falls in love with an angel played by Nicolas Cage. After Nic gives up his celestial status to be with her, and before she's tragically killed, there's this hot sex scene where Meg makes him describe how it feels to be inside her. Watching it made me wet, and for the first time I felt like I might be missing out. Flushed, I squeezed David's hand, trying to communicate that we should have sex, too. But when I shut off the video and pulled him in for a kiss, he shrugged me off and pointed to the TV. "I wanted to watch football," he said.

I waited a few weeks before trying again. We were falling asleep one night when I whispered into his shoulder blades, "I think we should have sex."

"How about tomorrow?" he shot back.

The next night, when I got to David's apartment after class, he handed me a huge box of chocolates.

"You didn't have to do that," I said, smiling.

David frowned.

"What?"

"I think we should wait," he said.

"You don't want to sleep with me?" I sank onto the couch.

"No, I do," he said, sitting next to me and patting my knee like I was his grandma. "But we're going to Florida in a couple of months. Why don't we wait until we're in a nice hotel room? It'll be more romantic that way."

I shook my head. I'd waited a long time to feel ready for sex. I wasn't about to give up now.

"Look," I said. "I know it might feel weird, or hurt me, or not last very long. But I don't care. I love you. I just want us to share the most intimate thing two people can experience." I looked up at David, hoping my Lionel Richie sentiments were hitting home. "Don't you want that, too?"

I'd waited a long time to feel ready for sex. I wasn't about to give up now.

He smiled. "I do. I'm sorry, I just got nervous."

I stroked his hand. "It'll be okay," I said.

I led him to the bedroom and we lay down and kissed for a long time. "Let's take this slowly," David said, unbuttoning my shirt. After about forty minutes of foreplay, he put on a condom and guided himself inside me. For a second it felt weird, and my muscles clenched, expecting pain. But it didn't hurt. It was wonderful. We lay there laughing, saying, "Why didn't we do this sooner?" and "We should do this again."

Then David started thrusting and I wasn't sure what to do. I tried to move in time but almost knocked myself out on his chin. So I wrapped my legs around his back and hung on as we wobbled and jerked, panting and laughing, talking about how good it felt. After about fifteen minutes, David's breathing sped up and he pushed my right hand between my legs, telling me to make sure I came, too.

Afterwards, we sat up in bed, holding hands, eating chocolates and drinking Coke from wine glasses. Neither of us could stop grinning. "So that was sex," I thought. Not such a big deal.